Chappie

Neill Blomkamp’s first full length feature got him an Academy nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay with wife Teri Tatchell.  Teri didn’t join hands with him for his second movie called Elysium but is back again for a perfect example of letting your imagination run completely amok.

Chappie is a movie that will need every one in the audience to open their minds up to what they have been exposed to – but only in bits and pieces. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been dealt with for a while across several movies but never been bought to life in a reasonably sensible manner like Blomkamp and Tatcher have done now (I may be wrong because I haven’t seen District 9).

Blomkamp and Tatcher continue with what they are most comfortable with i.e. the future and their perspective of what it has in store for us.  Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) is an engineer who is responsible for the first droid police force in the world.  He works for Tetravaal who has deployed the force in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Deon is simultaneously burning the midnight oil to take the project further i.e. a bot that can think for itself and surpass all boundaries known to mankind.  Laymen like us would know this as AI.  He succeeds in writing the code and against the wishes of Tetravaal head, Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver), deploys it on a scrap droid.  We therefore have Chappie – the first Robot that actually has consciousness.

Simultaneously, in Tetravaal, another engineer / ex-serviceman Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) is working – rather unsuccessfully – on a much more advanced version of the robot.  Moore is of course not the happiest man on earth with Wilson’s success and is willing to go to great lengths to ensure that his project sees the light of day.  Chappie is about to be caught somewhere in between all this.

Where Chappie is superb in its concept and execution with respect to special effects and action sequences, it is equally below par in terms of basic tenets of cinema.  There are a lot of loose ends that will leave many in the audience perplexed.  There are quite a few gaps in the narrative especially when it comes to Chappie learning the ropes in his initial days.  Blomkamp could have spent a little while tying these ends together.

Secondly, the talent of Jackman, Weaver and Patel goes totally wasted.  Anyone could have executed these roles in their current form. It isn’t defined in the script that either of these characters are South African but it isn’t defined otherwise either and one wonders why they don’t sound like the rest of the cast in their accent.

In all, Chappie survives on the basis of its concept and some great action sequences.  It is invokes thought about what the human mind is capable of – in technology as well as the dark emotional side.  If not for anything else, it is worth watching for the concept.  6 on 10.

Watch the trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi704556569/?ref_=tt_ov_vi